Capital Ship Fighter Complements

(or, “Su-tehp talks out of his ass for the first time since returning from his 17-year absence from HLP”)

So not long ago, I needed to calculate capital ship complements for a basis of comparison for a Freespace project. There are canon references to the capital ship fighter complements from the Techroom entries, the GTVA Colossus cutscene, and the first Command briefing from Training 1 at the start of FS2.

Starting from the Colossus FS2 cutscene as my initial basis of comparison, we know that the fighter complement of the Colossus is 60 wings, with each wing consisting of 4 fighters each. This is shown directly in the Colossus cutscene, so the Colossus having 240 (e.g. 60 times 4) fighters and bombers IS canon.

Now here is where it gets a bit tricky. Using a 12-member squadron as my base multiple, I was able to extrapolate the non-canon fighter complements of a few Terran and Vasudan canon ships. 12 is the traditional number of organizational craft to a squadron and it makes no sense to have 4-member wings that are squadron-less so I used multiples of 12 to calculate fighter complements. The rest of my calculations are NOT canon as my assumption that Terran and Vasudans squadrons are organized by the dozen has NOT been confirmed by Volition.

For the GTD Orion, I noted the exact wording from the Orion’s FS2 techroom entry ("more than 2 dozen wings") as well as counting the number of squadrons in the squadron list of the GTD Bastion in the Training 1 command briefing. In total, there were 10 squadrons on the Bastion squadron list (including the 53rd Hammerheads). 10 squadrons = 120 fightercraft.

In particular, the complement of the GVD Hatshepsut is NOT canon as I couldn’t find any specific references to it, but we can infer/assume that the Hecate and Hatshepsut have equal fighter complements since they were both designed by the Vasudans and Terrans united under the GTVA (meaning there was likely design cooperation between both species) and both destroyers were more than likely designed and built at roughly the same time.

GTVA Colossus: 60 wings (4 fighters to a wing) = 240 fighters = 20 squadrons (assuming 12 fighters in each squadron) (Source: GTVA Colossus cutscene)

GTD Hecate: "over 150 combat craft" meaning 150+ so which multiple of 12 gets us over 150? 12 times 13 = 156, so the Hecate carries 13 squadrons or 156 fighters and bombers. (Source: Hecate FS2 techroom entry)

GVD Typhon: "up to 30 wings" meaning that 30 wings is the upper limit, so 30 x 4 = 120 fighters = 10 squadrons (Source: Typhon FS2 techroom entry)

GTD Orion: "more than 2 dozen wings" so at least 8 squadrons, but the GTD Bastion, an Orion-class ship had 10 squadrons onboard during the Great War so 10 squadrons = 120 fighters (Source: FS2 Orion techroom entry AND Training 1 Command Briefing from FS2)

GVD Hatshepsut: Assuming it's equivalent to the GTD Hecate, then the Hatshepsut carries 13 squadrons or 156 fighters and bombers. (Source: None/non-canon)

I'm not even gonna try to extrapolate Shivan fighter complements because their techroom descriptions aren't anywhere near precise enough if they're even directly mentioned. I'm also not going to consider the SCv Moloch's multiplayer fighterbay canon since it never appears in singleplayer mode.

Anyway, if you need canon fighter complements to use as a basis of comparison for your own mods, here you go. I hope you find this useful.

Timestamp: 5:06pm EST, 3 March 2020